by C. Gockel
“It’s very dramatic,” he replied after too long a pause, beginning his own scan of the buildings.
“Yes, indeed,” said Noa, and he could hear the awe in the tone she let her thoughts form. “Can’t imagine anything more so.”
“Cannons firing on us from above as we try to take off from the water, that would be more dramatic,” James responded dryly.
James heard Noa laugh through the barriers of her helmet and his. But she did turn, a little too quickly, and looked back at Wren and Gunny, both walking along the length of the Ark, cannons balanced easily on their shoulders in the lower gravity. “Wren, Gunny—”
Manuel’s voice cut across the ether. “Incoming on our scopes.”
A sonic boom cracked above them. Gunny dropped to one knee and aimed. Wren hesitated and then did the same. Waves caused by the boom shook the Ark, and fragments of the dome broke off and fell into the partially-submerged city. A small vessel with a patchwork of metal on its hull entered what remained of the dome, swooped low, and for a moment James was sure it would engage. James’s mind leaped into the ether, his vision went bright white, and he heard the chatter from the vessel. “Tuned into the local ether … Those poor sods are holed up into the hospital … maybe we could have some fun? Eh, Boss?” There was a response. “Maybe we could get our asses shot off, Dorf. They’re being watched by an Atlantian Guard unit … is that a boat down there? And are those men on that boat pointing anti-aircraft phasers at us? Jeez, there is enough to share!” The vessel changed course, giving the Ark a wide berth. And then the conversation turned to the state of the engines, food stores, landing gear, and the best place to land and loot.
James squinted, following their path with his eyes as they flew off. He saw a few more small vessels through the mist. They buzzed between buildings like flies.
Lowering his weapon, Wren said over the ether. “Just honest smugglers.” For a moment, his silhouette was framed by the glow of S8O5. James could see inside his helmet. The freighter pilot was scowling, despite his words laced with bravado. Wren’s eyes met James’s and he turned away quickly.
The Ark floated through the misty city streets, the dome sparkling above them in the dim light of the sun and S8O5. The whole team was silent. Even Noa. Which meant she was on edge and not nearly as confident about this operation as she pretended. Her edginess put James on edge, and he struggled for a quip to break the tension … and again came up with nothing.
There was a whoosh from one of the airlocks, and everyone spun. 6T9 strode out onto the deck in the nearly freezing, oxygen-poor air, wearing a tight t-shirt, an even tighter pair of pants, and a type of footwear in the 20th century known as “flip flops.” In one hand he held a platter on which three tea cups were steaming.
“Refreshments?” 6T9 asked. James found his eyes crossing, going to the seal where the visor of his helmet met the oxygenating mask. It was still there. He looked up quickly and saw Gunny similarly cross-eyed.
“What are you doing?” said Wren, not bothering to use the ether, his incredulity clear in his voice even through the muffling of the helmet.
Striding over to them, beaming with what looked like pride, 6T9 said, “I am a multi-functional ‘bot. Eliza told me you must be tired, so I took the initiative to bring you some tea and cookies as refreshments.”
James looked down at the tray. There were some cookies on the plate. A haze of blackness appeared at the edge of his vision and he knew like he knew the gravity of the planet, that he could open the visor of his suit if he wanted. He found his hand convulsively squeezing the internal heat control located in the glove of his suit instead until an internal warning light went on. His vision cleared. Could it be that his augments had trouble maintaining his internal temperature? Was that the reason he was always so hungry? He blinked. He still wanted a cookie. He had to look away for fear of losing control and snatching one.
“You didn’t notice we were in environmental suits?” Wren snapped.
“I notice you are in environ suits,” said 6T9, very slowly, as though he suspected it might be a trick question.
James found himself taking pity on the ‘bot. “Ease up,” he said to Wren. “Don’t bang his head into Moore’s Wall, he’s perfectly capable of doing that himself.”
He heard Noa’s bright huff of laughter, and his nanos danced. From Gunny’s helmet came a slower “Heh. Heh, heh, heh …”
Noa’s thoughts entered the ether, clipped and focused. “Get below deck, 6T9.”
Wren growled. “Don’t waste good tea and cookies out here, you dumb 'bot!”
As 6T9 headed toward the airlock, Noa said, “Ghost, let’s open the channel to the hospital. We’ll be within firing range in another five minutes and—”
There was a whistling overhead, and Gunny knocked Wren down, shouting, “Hit the deck!”
James and Noa ducked in unison. 6T9 looked down at the deck, befuddled. There was a splash in the water in the direction they were heading, orange light flared, and the ship rocked. James spun to see a wall of flame.
* * *
Crouched on the deck, Noa looked over her shoulder. Flames leaped from the water as the ship rocked, but they were dying fast in the oxygen-poor air.
Gunny’s thoughts cracked through the ether. “That was a plasma grenade launched from a DX4 launcher. Those are restricted Fleet tech!”
“A what?” said Wren.
“Where did it come from?” Noa shouted.
“The hospital,” James said.
Gunny protested. “I didn’t see where it came from, and my apps—”
Noa didn't ask how James knew—he probably had a triangulation app. Her mind leapt into the ether. As soon as she sent a message back to the refugees, every scavenger ship in the vicinity would know who they were. She’d wanted to wait a little longer, but if they were being shot at by DX4 plasma charges, she couldn't waste a second more. “Ghost,” she said, “Get me connected to the Atlantian ether via the Ark—same frequency they contacted us on.” She didn't need the headaches that connecting directly to the local insecure ether could cause.
The response was grumbly, but Ghost said, “You're in, Commander. This planet's computer was only slightly less infested than Adam's Station’s.”
Noa reached out to the survivors. “This is Captain Noa Sato of the Galactic Fleet. We are here to relieve you, Atlantian Local Guard Team 329.”
“Halt your advance or we’ll fire,” said a voice her internal apps translated as belonging to Lieutenant Aarav Sterling.
“Ensign Chavez, forward thrusters full-stop,” Noa said. She nervously scanned the skies, and her eyes fell on a scavenger ship clinging to a wall just beneath a skywalk like a black spider. Was it coming closer out of nefarious intent, or just “honestly smuggling”? She bit back her worry.
“You’ll understand me if I say we will be needing more proof,” Sterling said. “That isn’t a Fleet vessel.”
“That is correct, Lieutenant, but it has been requisitioned by the Fleet under the terms of Colonial Evacuation Law 2389 by myself, Commander Noa Sato, most recently of the Sugihara under command of …” Noa went on. She gave a listing of her assignments, and when she got to her stint in System Six there was a snort, and a, “Lots of people like to say they served in Six.”
So she went further back, all the way to her stint at Fort Arena Roja where she’d received her low-G training.
“Then you know about the fleas,” said Sterling.
Noa blinked. “There were no fleas. There were mites.”
“Can you make this go faster?” James ground out.
Sterling said, “You were lucky as an officer you didn’t get mite extermination duty like the grunts.”
“Don't blame him for being twitchy,” said Gunny, kneeling on the deck, following the spider-like vessel with his sites.
Noa frowned. Sterling was obviously former Fleet himself, and obviously still testing her. “Of course I got extermination duty. That red dust smelled like v
omit!” Officers and enlisted alike experienced that joy.
The small craft attached to the skywalk slid around the building.
James sidled closer to her. “We’re attracting more attention,” he said, his blue eyes violet in the low light, and then his gaze jerked upwards to a spot in the sky behind her. Noa spun. There were more scavenging ships hovering around like flies.
Turning back toward the hospital, Noa reached across the ether. “What else do I need to say to convince you I am who I say I am? Do you want to know the barracks I was in during basic? The serial number on my first pair of g-boots? A description of my bunkmate?”
A thought that wasn’t from the captain, Noa, or any of her crew, flickered through the ether. “Was she pretty?”
“Is that one of yours, Sterling?” Noa asked.
“No,” said James aloud. His eyes were on a small vessel buzzing near the top of the dome.
“No, Commander,” Sterling replied in what was the first acknowledgement of her rank. “Someone has hacked into this channel.”
“Noa, we need to get out of here,” James said, his left hand tapping a rapid staccato rhythm on the barrel of his rifle. “There are too many of them. I’m having trouble keeping track.”
Noa ground her teeth. Over the ether, she said, “We need to talk in person. The Atlantian ether isn’t secure.” Aloud she grumbled, “Goddamn it, I sound like a Luddeccean.”
Beside her, James said, “Well, technically …” Behind his visor his brow furrowed. He blinked and said softly, “Harmless,” and his eyes went to another vessel.
Across the ether, Sterling said, “You’re free to approach. I’ll meet you at the sixth-story skywalk; it’s now at water level.”
Noa’s eyes went to the hospital situated directly in front of them, where the channel met another in a t-intersection and dead-ended. On the starboard side, a walkway arched over the water to the building across the street. “I see it. Chavez, sending you coordinates,” she said.
“Aye, Commander,” Chavez replied across the channel, and the vessel began to move forward.
They were a few meters from their destination when the sun slipped from its zenith and behind a building. It was only a few minutes past the planet’s noon, but so far from the sun’s light, it looked like twilight. If it weren’t for the reflected light of the enormous S8O5, it would have been as dark as night.
Beside her, James shook his head. A red light she recognized was on inside his helmet.
“James, your suit is overheating,” she whispered.
“No, no,” he said, his voice muffled. “I’m comfortable.” He put a gloved hand to his helmet. “I just can’t see very well when the light changes. If I can’t see them, I can’t listen.”
“Listen?” said Noa. She must have misheard.
James’s hand dropped, and his eyes met hers. His face was a few hands-widths away, they were separated by two thin layers of plastic, and it seemed like they were a million clicks away. For a moment, despite everything, he seemed like a stranger.
“Commander,” a voice shouted, muffled by a breathing apparatus.
She was getting “caught up in her own wheels” as her dad used to say, thoughts and doubts she didn’t have time for. She turned toward the voice. A man was standing in a broken window of the arching skywalk. “Lieutenant Sterling?” Noa shouted back.
The enviro-suited figure nodded.
“We need to talk, privately,” Noa said aloud. Quickly, she wanted to add, but didn’t.
He nodded again. With a thought she sent Chavez an order to give some boost to the antigrav. The Ark rose out of the water, so that the ship was just about a meter below the walkway. The figure said, “Wait, Commander, take off your helmet.”
There was a whistling noise overhead and Noa’s eyes jerked upward, just in time to see a scavenger ship clipped by phaser fire from a roof.
“Please,” Sterling said. “Commander, it will speed things up.”
He lifted a hologlobe in one hand, an old one, nearly as wide as Noa’s forearm. In it flashed a picture of a younger Noa in Fleet Gray, smiling broadly.
“He wants visual verification,” James said.
Sterling lifted his own helmet to show her there was no trick. He was handsome, in the typical Afro-Eurasian way—narrow light brown eyes, a thin nose, full lips. But his looks were marred by the dark circles under his bloodshot eyes.
Noa took off her helmet, oxygen filtration device and all. The cold air was bracing, and although the air was as dense as Earth’s, the nitrogen load was higher, and it almost instantly made her lungs burn with want.
Sterling smiled. “Thank God, it is you … Permission to come aboard?”
“Permission granted,” Noa said, snapping her helmet back on.
Hastily putting his own mask back on, he leapt lightly down onto the deck and walked over to Noa.
Her mind ticked down the seconds with every step. They’d been planetside for over an hour. She’d announced who she was over the local ether. The Luddecceans didn’t use the ether, but she’d taken off her helmet, too, and anyone who knew the history of the Luddeccean planet would have recognized the Ark. A lightbeam message could already be traveling to Luddeccea. They could be rounding up the Luddeccean Guard Fleet within minutes … her mind raced with everything she had to say to Sterling, to warn him that he wouldn’t be taking his people to Luddeccea. “Before you agree to come with us, you need to know that we’re not going to Libertas, or Luddeccea.”
Sterling, advancing across the deck, came to a sudden stop. “We have to come with you,” he said. Above their heads another scavenger ship buzzed by and was trailed by phaser fire.
Sterling didn’t even look up. “We’re running low on ammo.”
“We’re being pursued by Luddecceans,” James said. “You should know that, too.”
Noa’s shoulders sagged. James was right to bring it up, but she didn’t want to argue with comparative virtues of running with her versus staying here.
Sterling was quiet for a moment, but then he said, “We have some people who are severely injured, attached to medical equipment. You should know that, as well.”
Noa nodded. “They’re welcome to what we have.”
Sterling gave a grim smile. “We better get moving. I don’t suppose you can help supply cover while I move my people off the top floors?”
Noa straightened. He had a whole platoon according to his distress call … she had Gunny, but Chavez and Manuel, her only two other military personnel, were tied up below deck.
He smiled grimly. “I lied about our military might when I made the distress signal.”
Noa held out a hand and introduced Sterling to Gunny. Gunny had been avoiding Noa's gaze since their conversation, but he met Sterling's and nodded smartly. Sterling was suitably impressed by Gunny’s credentials; he was definitely Fleet. Noa was about to assign Wren to help with the evacuation, but before she could, Gunny said, “I’d like to request James come with us.”
Sterling pivoted toward James, and Noa could see he expected an introduction.
“James isn’t Fleet,” Gunny said, “but he’s one cool head in a fight, and an incredible shot. I trust him with my life.” He looked almost shyly toward Noa as he said it. As if afraid she might say no.
“Plus I can lift real heavy things,” James said.
Gunny barked a laugh. “He can!”
Noa felt herself go cold. Somewhere in the distance, a scavenger ship whined. The Luddeccean Guard were after James; he shouldn’t be separated from the team.
As though reading her thoughts, James whispered through the Genji cipher, “The sooner we get out of here, the better.”
He wasn’t supposed to say that. He wasn’t supposed to be so cooperative. He’d been against the mission from the start. But he was right, and she had to put her feelings aside. She nodded and pulled the satchel she was wearing over her head and handed it to him. “It’s filled with the last of Ghost’s ether extend
ers. You’ll be able to use the ship’s ether to communicate, bypass Atlantia’s buggy system, and not be overheard.” James slung it over his shoulder. The sun slipped from behind the building, shining so brightly on his visor that she couldn’t see within. “Be careful, and fast,” she said.
“I can lift real heavy things.” 6T9’s voice directly behind her made Noa jump.
Sterling rolled back on his feet, Gunny snorted, and Wren made a gagging noise.
“I can lift real heavy things,” 6T9 said again, his expression earnest. He tilted his head. “And I am familiar with medical equipment, and know how to be useful to people who are in pain.” He looked down at the tray in his hands. The tea cups had tipped over, but the cookies were miraculously still there. “Really,” he added, looking up at Noa. “Even if I'm not the sharpest hammer in the toolbox.”
Someone snorted at the botched idiom.
Noa’s mouth dropped open, ashamed though she shouldn’t be. 6T9 couldn’t feel embarrassment.
“It’s a good idea,” James said, thunking 6T9 on the shoulder.
6T9 smiled. “I’m ninety-eight percent charged and ready to go!” He looked down at the cookies. “Well, except I haven't put these away …”
James opened the satchel. “Put them in here.” He looked at Sterling. “There are kids, right?”
Gunny grunted. “Good thinking,” he said and passed his heavy weapon to Noa.
Sterling nodded, and 6T9 put the cookies in the satchel. Over the ether, Manuel said, “Commander, remember, if this hospital is a good one, they may have a replacement heart for Oliver.”
“I remember,” James said. “Monica gave me the model number to look for.”
